The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission will rank telecom and internet service providers based on different evaluation methods, including customer surveys, inspections, audits and test drives.

The telecom regulator is also considering to publish the final evaluation report on its website or through the media to raise public awareness and create a competitive environment conducive for better service.

The BTRC yesterday issued a gazette notification on this in its first regulation to fix the service quality issue.

The gazette, signed by Md Jahirul Haque, acting chairman of BTRC, also declared a minimum of 7 mbps internet downlink speed in fourth generation (4G) data services as the standard and an uplink speed of 1 mbps.

For 3G, the minimum downlink speed was set at 2 mbps and uplink speed was 128 kbps.

Under the regulation, the telecommunication and internet service providers (ISP¬) will have to pay a penalty of up to Tk 100 crore for non-compliance.

According to the new parametres, for mobile services, the maximum rate for call drops was set at two percent while the call setup success rate should remain above 97 percent.

Operators should ensure that their networks are ready to setup a call within seven seconds.

In terms of customer care, 90 percent of the complaints should take an average of 40 seconds to be heard. At the same time, the BTRC has fixed five working days to resolve the complaints.

Operators also need to maintain speeds of 80 kbps 2G internet service downlink and 20 kbps uplink, according to the regulation.

Besides, the broadband service providers will have to maintain an average of less than 5 mbps download speed and 1 mbps upload speed.

“This regulation was long overdue,” said Haque.

“Operators will have to comply with this and if they fail their names will be published.”

Haque said early different guidelines and directives on the benchmarks of quality of services were all combined to make the regulation.

Every service provider has to meet the quality standards in their entire service area.

Senior officials of the telecom watchdog said they would run their own test drives or appoint a third-party to measure the service quality, which will be used for preparing the evaluations.

However, mobile operators criticised the different parameters set. They said that regulators running test drives on individual networks was not practiced anywhere in the world and BTRC should test its own network system.

Regarding the customer survey, regulators will a rating system using five and it will be marked between 5-1, with 5 being the highest mark obtainable.

Currently, there are about 500 service providers in the country, including telecoms, internet services providers, Wi-Max and landphone operators, included for the quality check.

The new regulation will be imposed on all of them, although the parameters are different.